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Energy Conscious Consumers (ECO2) is a three years project (2018-2021) funded under the EU Horizon2020 programme. ECO2 will facilitate European consumers (individuals and groups) to become conscious about their energy consumption and at the same time improve their energy efficiency. For this purpose, the project will design and implement a large-scale and multi-language learning system that will offer users two forms of learning – individual learning through an online platform or group learning in which the e-learning supports the group processes. ECO2 starts with 9 countries involved (Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania and Portugal), will expand to at least 2 more during the project period, and makes it possible for all EU countries to join.
The ECO2 learning platform will deliver “Actions” on five important themes:
• Change the house – improving the footprint of the house and its appliances
• Smart consumers – making use of and understanding ICT energy equipment
• My energy consumption – understand energy language and your bills
• No rebound – avoid to make new energy consuming habits
• Making my energy – produce your own energy – become a prosumer
ARC Fund will be responsible for developing the theme “Making my energy” which will present the available technologies for generation of own energy and will identify the steps to follow in case a household is interested in own energy generation.
A specific “Action” on co-creation of policies, as well as service/technology innovations and designs will also be developed. The results will be communicated to policy-makers and innovators through policy seminars.
The project has three phases – Ramp-up, Pilot and Upscaling. The Ramp-up phase includes making infrastructures, segmentation analysis, story-boards and production of themes. During the Pilot phase the “Actions” will be tested with voluntary consumers. The Upscaling phase involves broader recruitment of consumers, expansion to new countries, and collaboration with consumer gate-keepers. ECO2 will continue after the end of the project by an ECO2 Community and stakeholder responsibility for the ECO2 learning platform.
In short, ECO2 will:
• Establish a European ECO2 online infrastructure to facilitate transformative group and individual learning
• Develop six learning Actions – five thematic and one on policy supporting energy conscious consumer behavior
• Facilitate consumers to increase their know-how to a level, where they are comfortable with new action
• Empower citizens to take energy consuming habits in their own hands and improve them
• Make an ECO2 Community to take responsibility for sustaining and expanding the ECO2 Platform and the European reach of consumer energy behavior change
Besides ARC Fund, ECO2 includes the following partners:
• Danish Board of Technology (project coordinator), Denmark
• Hebes Intelligence, Greece
• SINERGIE, Italy
• University of Helsinki, Finland
• Associação Portuguesa para a Defesa do Consumidor (DECO), Portugal
• Strategic Design Scenarios (SDS), Belgium
• Knowledge Economy Forum, Lithuania
• University College Cork (UCC), Ireland
For further inquiries, please contact:
Zoya Damianova: zoya.damianova@online.bg
Desislava Asenova: desislava.asenova@online.bg
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